Mariah Carey provided the world with 2016's finest viral moment during the year's very last gasping breaths, when a production snafu ruined the "Always Be My Baby" singer's New Year's Eve performance moments before midnight. The disaster has already been reported on and joked about at length -- so jarring was it to see a mega-star of Carey's wattage stalk about the stage in such a blatant (and comical) admittance of defeat.

But The New Yorker opted to further shame the iconic singer days after the dust had settled. The publication ran a comic to its Instagram page today (January 3) by cartoonist Emily Flake, depicting a presumed manager hovering near Carey and telling her, "I'm sorry, Mariah, but all I can get you booked on now is the Inauguration."

It echoes initial reactions from several Twitter users who proclaimed 2016 -- a year rife with celebrity deaths -- had claimed its final victim with Carey's career.

But the idea that her New Year's Eve performance -- entertaining even in its catastrophe -- had somehow diminished Carey's star-power so much, she is now no better than the Z-listers tapped to perform at president-elect Donald Trump's forthcoming celeb-less inauguration on January 20 is absurd.

And while admittedly not Carey's greatest live performance the blunder did, at least, offer a fitting end to a year considered increasingly bleak by so many.